Several families sue TikTok after teen deaths

Seven families in France want TikTok to be held accountable for the alleged decline of their children's health, two of whom committed suicide.

After individual complaints fell flat, several French families have started a criminal class action against the Chinese social media platform TikTok.

The main complaint is that the platform promotes self-harm content to underage teens. According to Franceinfo, the families formed a collective called Argos Victima to have more weight in court against ByteDance, the company that runs TikTok.

“TikTok, like other giants in the sector, must answer for its actions and negligence,” Laure Boutron-Marmion, Argos Victima lawyer, told reporters.

Last year, the parents of 15-year-old Marie already filed criminal charges against TikTok, claiming the app trapped their daughter in a bubble of toxic content, which led to girls’ suicide. According to Franceinfo, Marie was bullied for being overweight and, like many of her peers, spent a lot of time on TikTok.

“When you type in 'weight loss', in less than a minute, TikTok suggests diets, but also self-harm and cutting, and content about depression,” Stéphanie Mistre, Marie’s mother, said.

Parents lamented at TikTok’s differing approaches with the apps’ Chinese version, Douyin, having 40-minutes daily limits to underage account holders, with the algorithm supposedly focusing more on scientific and educational content.

Earlier this year, the European Union launched an investigation into whether ByteDance's TikTok breached online content rules aimed at protecting children, mainly over the platform's policies regarding addictive design and screen time limits, the rabbit hole effect, age verification, and default privacy settings.